AWS suffers 15-hour outage after laying off hundreds of tech workers

Amazon Web Services suffered a massive outage on Monday that lasted over 15 hours, taking down major platforms including ChatGPT, Fortnite, Snapchat, and banking apps while causing billions in lost productivity. The extended downtime comes just months after AWS laid off hundreds of employees in July, with CEO Andy Jassy warning that AI adoption would reduce the need for human workers in certain roles.

What happened: The outage began at 3:11 AM EST due to a DNS resolution issue, which prevented websites from connecting to their servers by disrupting the system that translates web addresses into numerical IP addresses.

• While AWS claimed the underlying issue was “fully mitigated” after three hours, normal operations weren’t restored until 6:53 PM—over half a day later.
• The outage affected Amazon’s entire ecosystem, from shopping to Ring doorbell cameras, plus third-party services that rely on AWS infrastructure.

The timing raises questions: Cloud computing expert Corey Quinn, author of the “Last Week in AWS” newsletter, suggests the prolonged outage may be linked to AWS’s recent workforce reductions and reliance on AI over experienced human expertise.

• “They legitimately did not know what was breaking for a patently absurd length of time,” Quinn wrote in The Register.
• He argued that veteran employees possess crucial “tribal knowledge” about system interdependencies that AI cannot replicate: “You can’t hire for is the person who remembers that when DNS starts getting wonky, check that seemingly unrelated system in the corner.”

What Jassy said about AI replacing workers: The Amazon CEO warned employees in June that generative AI adoption would reshape the workforce.

• “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy said, according to Reuters.
• “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”

The bigger trend: Major tech companies are increasingly using AI for coding tasks, with Google reporting 25% of new code written by AI and Microsoft claiming nearly one-third.

• However, several studies suggest AI coding assistants may actually slow down workflows rather than accelerate them.
• Technical roles remain prime targets for AI replacement, even at companies with resources to hire top talent.

Why this matters: The incident highlights potential risks of replacing experienced human workers with AI systems, particularly in critical infrastructure roles where institutional knowledge and pattern recognition from past incidents prove invaluable during crisis situations.